Your Right to Know

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoJacquelyn Martin | Associated PressIn Jerusalem, Secretary of State John Kerry waits to take off in a Jordanian helicopter to fly to Amman, Jordan, for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

By Lesley WroughtonREUTERS • Sunday June 30, 2013 10:46 AM

JERUSALEM — Secretary of State John Kerry extended his Middle East peace mission yesterday,
shuttling between Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, for more talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders
on reviving their stalled negotiations.

But officials on both of the feuding sides played down prospects of the bustle bringing about
any diplomatic breakthrough that would restart the talks.

Cancelling a trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Kerry flew from Jerusalem to the Jordanian
capital for a second meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He then returned to
Jerusalem to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a third time.

Early in the day, an Israeli official said Kerry’s visit could yield an announcement that
Israeli and Palestinian delegates would meet under U.S. and Jordanian auspices.

But as Kerry headed into a late dinner meeting with Netanyahu and key advisers, a member of
Netanyahu’s inner circle, Civil Defense Minister Gilad Erdan, sounded less upbeat in a TV
interview.

“To the best of my understanding, Abu Mazen (Abbas) is still demanding the same preconditions,
which we have no intention of meeting,” Erdan said.

Peacemaking broke down in 2010 in a dispute over Israeli building in the occupied West Bank and
East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for a future independent state.

Abbas has said that, for new talks to be held, Netanyahu must freeze settlements and recognize
the West Bank’s boundary before its capture by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war as the basis for
the future Palestine’s border.

Israel, seeking to keep settlement blocs under any peace accord, balks at those terms.

State Department officials said Abbas and Kerry had met privately for about two hours at Abbas’
residence in Amman before advisers joined them.

U.S. officials have compared Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy with Henry Kissinger’s Middle East peace
efforts in the 1970s.

A senior State Department official said Kerry was prepared to “put in the legwork,” even if it
meant another meeting with Abbas before his scheduled departure for Asia today.

However, Kerry — now on his fifth visit as a peace broker to the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate —
has said he would not have returned to the region so soon if he did not think he could make
progress. He has been guarded about his plans to break the impasse, while warning that time is
running out.

He is eager to clinch a deal to resume talks before the U.N. General Assembly, which has already
granted de facto recognition to a Palestinian state, convenes in September.

Netanyahu is concerned that the Palestinians, in the absence of direct peace talks, could use
the U.N. session as a springboard for further statehood moves circumventing Israel.

With the Middle East engulfed in turmoil from protests in Egypt to the Syrian civil war, Kerry
has said it is time for “hard decisions” by Israel and the Palestinians.